Famous Two Hundred Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Two Hundred poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous two hundred poems. These examples illustrate what a famous two hundred poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Beautiful Comrie

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye lovers of the picturesque, away, away!
To beautiful Comrie and have a holiday;
Aud bask in the sunahine and inhale the fragrant air
Emanating from the woodlands and shrubberies there. 

The charming village of Comrie is most lovely to be seen,
Especially in the summer season when the trees are green;
And near by is Loch Earn and its waters sparkling clear,
And as...Read more of this...

A Watch In The Night

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Watchman, what of the night? - 
Storm and thunder and rain, 
Lights that waver and wane,
Leaving the watchfires unlit. 
Only the balefires are bright, 
And the flash of the lamps now and then 
From a palace where spoilers sit, 
Trampling the children of men.

Prophet, what of the night? - 
I stand by the verge of the sea, 
Banished, uncomforted,...Read more of this...

To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell
  Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain.  I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of...Read more of this...

Waking in the Blue

by Robert Lowell
 The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")

What use is my sense of humour?
I grin...Read more of this...

Briefly It Enters and Briefly Speaks

by Jane Kenyon
 I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . 

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . . 

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . . 

I am water rushing to...Read more of this...

A School Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 "Let us now praise famous men"--
 Men of little showing-- 
For their work continueth, 
And their work continueth, 
Broad and deep continues,
 Greater then their knowing!

Western wind and open surge
 Took us from our mothers--
Flung us on a naked shore
(Twelve bleak houses by the shore.
Seven summers by the shore! )
 'Mid two hundred brothers.

There we met with famous men
...Read more of this...

Two Hundred Years After

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
(Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight)
Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,
And straggling files of men; when these were gone,
A double limber and six mules went by,
Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud
To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago.
Then darkness hid them with a...Read more of this...

Five A.M

by Allen Ginsberg
 Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
 Transmuted back to breath
 in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind -- but where's it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing...Read more of this...

The Horrors of Majuba

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas after the great Majuba fight:
And the next morning, at daylight,
Captain Macbean's men were ordered to headquarters camp,
So immediately Captain Macbean and his men set out on tramp. 

And there they were joined by the Blue Jackets and 58th men,
Who, for unflinching courage, no man can them condemn;
And that brave little band was commissioned to bury their dead,
And the...Read more of this...

The City of Dreadful Thirst

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The stranger came from Narromine and made his little joke-- 
"They say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk. 
But all the smartest men down here are puzzled to define 
A kind of new phenomenon that came to Narromine. 

"Last summer up in Narromine 'twas gettin' rather warm-- 
Two hundred in the water bag, and lookin' like a storm--...Read more of this...

London Bridge

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them,...Read more of this...

Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy

by Walt Whitman
 YOU just maturing youth! You male or female! 
Remember the organic compact of These States, 
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty,
 equality of
 man, 
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and
 white
 by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the...Read more of this...

The Burning of the Steamer City of Montreal

by William Topaz McGonagall
 A sad tale of the sea I will relate, which will your hearts appal
Concerning the burning of the steamship "City of Montreal,"
Which had on board two hundred and forty-nine souls in all,
But, alas! a fearful catastrophe did them befall. 

The steamer left New York on the 6th August with a general cargo,
Bound for Queenstown and Liverpool also;
And all went...Read more of this...

Song of the Wagons

by Du Fu
 Wagons rumble rumble Hhorses whinny whinny Foot person bow arrow each at waist Father mother wife children go mutual see off Dust dust not see Xianyang bridge Pull clothes stamp foot bar way weep Weep sound directly up strike clouds clouds Road side passerby ask foot person Foot person only say mark down often Some from ten...Read more of this...

The Aged Pilot Man

by Mark Twain
 On the Erie Canal, it was,
All on a summer's day,
I sailed forth with my parents
Far away to Albany.

From out the clouds at noon that day
There came a dreadful storm,
That piled the billows high about,
And filled us with alarm.

A man came rushing from a house,
Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray,
Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,
Snub up while yet...Read more of this...

The Grey Rock

by William Butler Yeats
 Poets with whom I learned my trade.
Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,
Here's an old story I've remade,
Imagining 'twould better please
Your cars than stories now in fashion,
Though you may think I waste my breath
Pretending that there can be passion
That has more life in it than death,
And though at bottling of your wine
Old wholesome Goban had no say;
The moral's yours because it's...Read more of this...

The Holy War

by Rudyard Kipling
 "For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, thatthe
walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse
potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto."--Bunyan's Holy War.)


A tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A privet under Fairfax,
A minister of God--


Two hundred years and thirty
 Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
 And Bunyan...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

Raising The Flag

by Robert William Service
 Behold! the Spanish flag they're raising
Before the Palace courtyard gate;
To watch its progress bold and blazing
Two hundred patient people wait.
Though bandsmen play the anthem bravely
The silken emblem seems to lag;
Two hundred people watch it gravely -
But only two salute the flag.

Fine-clad and arrogant of manner
The twain are like dark dons of old,
And to that high and haughty banner
Uplifted palms...Read more of this...

Plutonian Ode

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

The Famous Tay Whale

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'TWAS in the month of December, and in the year l883,
That a monster whale came to Dundee,
Resolved for a few days to sport and play,
And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay. 

So the monster whale did sport and play
Among the innocent little fishes in the beautiful Tay,
Until he was seen by some men one day,
And they resolved...Read more of this...

Saving a Train

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1869, and on the 19th of November,
Which the people in Southern Germany will long remember,
The great rain-storm which for twenty hours did pour down,
That the rivers were overflowed and petty streams all around. 

The rain fell in such torrents as had never been seen before,
That it seemed like a second deluge, the mighty torrents'...Read more of this...

Apocrypha

by Marcin Malek
Two hundred white-winged
were thrown on a Hermon Mount
they sinned with a free will
not such made them Lord
whoever was...
...Read more of this...

Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight

by Carl Sandburg
 THE POLICEMAN buys shoes slow and careful;
the teamster buys gloves slow and careful;
they take care of their feet and hands;
they live on their feet and hands.

The milkman never argues;
he works alone and no one speaks to him;
the city is asleep when he is on the job;
he puts a bottle on six hundred porches and calls it a day’s work;
he...Read more of this...

Telegram

by Carl Sandburg
 I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist’s tube to a whispering pinch of salt.
Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he got his wife, when the...Read more of this...

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